you are both cain and abel - Chapter 3 - edelgarfield (2024)

Chapter Text

It’s a remarkably short time before you begin pacing the length of the room. You wave your hand in the air, anxiously tossing an orb of light between your palms. The light shifts periodically—blood red to bright pink to sunset orange, brightening and dimming, rolling slowly up the length of your arm and weaving chaotically between your legs.

Astarion’s eyes follow you from the beginning, barely even blinking as he charts your path across the floor. Unease pricks the skin at the base of his neck, as your mindless circles around the kitchen remind him of the path you made through Moonrise’s hallways just before you climbed out a window. Just like then, your body moves with almost no input from you, acting on muscle memory alone, desperate to work out the restless energy roiling beneath your skin. But from what he saw before, nothing on earth save for blood loss and frostbite are capable of halting that energy in its tracks.

Karlach, too, takes notice, and her eyes follow you with brows raised high. It’s been a long time since she dealt with a soldier’s nerves. In Avernus, all of her comrades were more than eager to charge the battlefield, hungry for the slaughter. Anyone who wasn’t nearly mad with bloodlust would never dare show it. Any perceived weakness would make you easy prey for foe and ally alike. But she remembers a time when she used to serve a young lord, who would anxiously pace the halls of Wyrm’s Crossing while awaiting an invite to a duke’s chambers. He would mutter to himself under his breath, planning arguments and rebuttals, point and counterpoint to any pushback he received.

At the time she thought it charming—proof that despite his ambitions, he was just another kid trying to get a foothold in with people who wouldn’t give him the time of day. He very rarely left those meetings satisfied—usually grumbling curses and storming out of the keep with single-minded fury. She’d sympathized with him, trusted that his strategies were as cunning and sensible as the man appeared to her, and believed that the people in charge were blinded by resentment for someone young, bright, and built from poverty.

In hindsight, she wonders if the lords of Baldur’s Gate, jaded and selfish as they are, sensed what she failed to see.

After a few more minutes, Karlach decides she’s had enough watching you run yourself into the ground. “Ugh, Soldier, watching you do that is making me nervous,” Karlach finally bursts out..

You pause, a dim, orange sphere of light resting in your palm. “Watching me do what?”

Karlach waves across the length of the room, at the path you’ve been circling ever since Halsin left. “Wearing a hole in the floor like that. You should put your feet up while we have the chance. We might need to do a hell of a lot of running in the next few hours.”

You purse your lips, the light in your hand shifting to a bright vermillion. “I have Haste and Misty Step; I can probably get away without running.”

Karlach rolls her eyes. “Okay, smartass.” She beckons you over with a wave of her hand. “Come over here and take a load off with Mama K.”

The orb of light in your palm disappears in a small shower of sparks as a breath of laughter escapes through your nose. Dutifully, you go to her, settling on the unlit stone oven next to Karlach. The nervous energy doesn’t fully leave, it still thrums beneath the surface of your skin—an itch you can’t scratch. Unbidden, your leg begins to bounce, your mind still drifting to thoughts of Halsin even as you turn your attention to Karlach.

Karlach watches you with pursed lips, a look of deep concentration set on her face. After a few moments, a spark of inspiration ignites in her eyes and she begins digging through the bag on her hip. “You know what I found at Last Light the other day?”

She pulls a sheaf of crinkled vellum from her pack in triumph. The edges turn black with scrorch marks and in some places, inked words smear into splotches of indecipherable gray. She tries to smooth out the creases against her thigh, and faint wisps of smoke tickle the skin beneath your nose. You can’t help your curiosity as she finally holds the newly singed pages aloft.

“More kindling?” Astarion tuts. “I think we’re more than set on Selûnite prayer books for Shadowheart to burn, but it’s the thought that counts.”

Karlach rolls her eyes. “It’s a torn-up copy of Volo’s Guide to Monsters.” Both you and Astarion visibly perk up. “A lot of the pages are missing, but, I still thought it’d be a fun read.”

“Gods, yes,” you breathe. “I need more material for getting under Elminster’s skin if we ever see him again.”

Astarion leans over, peering at the half-ruined book as Karlach flips through it. “Oh, please tell me he included an entry on vampires.”

Karlach thrusts the paper into Astarion’s chest, which he takes eagerly. “We’ll just have to find out won’t we?”

With her hands now free, Karlach easily wraps an arm around your shoulders and pulls you against her side. You can’t help the pleased hum that rises from your chest, a near purr as you bask in Karlach’s warmth. You miss the warm, sunlit days of summer. You didn’t think to relish in them as they passed. Even if you’d spared a thought to the oncoming winter, you don’t know that it would have meant anything without any reference for the season’s chill. But one thing you’ve come to treasure about autumn is the excuse to press yourself close to your friends’ sides, huddling around the fire with warm food and drink, heavy blankets draped over your shoulders. Karlach burns warm enough to outshine the sun—as long as you have her you don’t mind the chill.

Astarion grins wide, fangs on display, and flips eagerly through the pages, paying special attention to the footnotes left by Elminster. “Oh, this is too good, listen to this—” Astarion puffs out his chest, his pitch rising to mimic Volo’s speech. “‘While I’ve never had the chance to partake of an illithid brain, I suspect it would be similar to pickled squid with an aftertaste varying based on their colony’s diet. Editor’s Note: Illithid brains are poisonous and drive sentient creatures insane.’”

You chuckle to yourself. “I suppose the good news for Volo is that if this whole tadpole problem doesn’t sort itself out, he’ll have ample opportunity to find out firsthand.”

Astarion looks at you flatly over the top of the pages. “Morbid. Ooh, he has an entry about kobolds. What do you think their brains taste like?”

Karlach ponders this for a moment, gazing upward. “Like lizard, I’d imagine?”

You close your eyes and allow the familiar cadence of Astarion’s voice to wash over you, warmed to your bones by the fire in Karlach’s heart. This must be what His Majesty’s life is like—an ever-burning hearth to warm yourself by and a lap to doze on never far away. You envy Halsin. How nice it would be to shrink yourself down to something harmless and small, to burrow yourself into the crook of Karlach’s neck, where she’ll keep you safe and warm.

You could shrink down even smaller, to the tiniest spider (fitting, for a child of Lolth) and skitter up the slope of her neck, across her lovely face and into her open mouth. As she slept, there would be nothing to stop you from skirting around the points of her teeth and finding purchase on her tongue. Her airways would be wide and unblocked for you to crawl down the back of her mouth, little more than a tickle within her windpipe as you burrow down, down, down. It would be so warm, in the pocket of her lungs, right next to her fiery heart. Within Karlach’s meat and sinew, the chill of winter would never find you.

When the air grew too hot and stale, you need only end the transformation, and your expanding body would burst violently through Karlach’s flesh, shredding organs and breaking bones, her skin would encompass yours like a warm blanket and she would be yours yours yours—

Schlck, schlck, schlck.

Meat sliding across cold slate. A familiar energy needling the center of your brain. Something looming within the walls, closer now than every before.

-heir--- ---tyrant-

--FLAW-

You go completely still, your mind empty of all else, save for the voice calling you into the depths.

Across the room, Gale sits cross-legged on the floor, his spellbook spread open in front of him. Rolan stands nearby, arms crossed tightly over his chest, tail curling and uncurling around his own ankle. He peers at Gale’s spells with academic curiosity, but refrains from looking any closer than a cursory glance. It’s a cardinal sin to read another wizard’s spellbook without permission.

Gale notes his interest and flashes the young man a warm smile. “See something you like?” he asks brightly.

Rolan’s eyes dart quickly away, flustered at having been caught. “Just curious,” he mutters. “You seem to have a wealth of spells copied down.”

Gale glances at the battle-worn pages of his spellbook. “Oh, I used to know a great deal more,” he sighs.

His old spellbook, his crowning achievement, containing the sum of all the knowledge he’d gained through his studies, sits in a dusty drawer, locked away and never to be used again. All his power vanished in the blink of an eye, sapped away by the orb as surely as his life’s essence. All things the same, he’d prefer if the orb consumed more of his life and left his magic untouched. Without his mastery of the arcane, Gale’s life is of little consequence. But Gale had no choice in what the orb took from him, only that cursed choice to meddle in the affairs of gods in the first place.

Rolan eyes him quizzically, brows furrowed. “I wasn’t aware magic was something you could forget,” he says caustically.

Gale shrugs. “Under normal circ*mstances, no. But mine is a special case I’m afraid.”

Rolan casts a wary glance around the room, at you and the others absorbed in conversation. “Your group seems to be full of those.”

Gale chuckles. “I suppose we must seem a strange bunch to you.”

Rolan gives him another deadpan stare. “Strange is putting it lightly.” His words cut through the air with a harsh edge. He sighs, shaking his head wryly. “But I suppose these are strange times.”

“I find they almost always are. A peaceful life just means that someone else is fixing the problem.” That earns a small huff of laughter from Rolan’s mouth.

Gale can’t help but internally cheer at the victory, small as it is. “Here, come sit.” Gale pats the ground next to him. “We should compare spell lists.”

Rolan hesitates, a brief look of surprise passing over his face. “You… don’t mind?” He eyes Gale’s spellbook, wide open and unhidden.

Gale follows his eyes. “What, about these common spells?” Gale laughs with an edge of haughtiness. “There’s nothing here that you couldn’t find at a magic shop in Baldur’s Gate. Perhaps if I had my own formulations I’d be more possessive, but.” Gale waves a hand vaguely. “Those capabilities are beyond my reach, now.”

Rolan’s eyebrow twitches. He bites his tongue, holding back a sharp comment that Gale is holding thousands of gold worth of arcane knowledge at his fingertips. Whether the spells are available in Baldur’s Gate and whether the average wizard can obtain them are two very different things. But the offer to peer at a spellbook as extensive as Gale’s is too tempting; Rolan isn’t going to give Gale a reason to rescind it.

Slowly and with an overabundance of caution, Rolan lowers himself to the smooth stone floor. Dread and suspicion fuel the fire in his eyes. His burning gaze prickles Gale’s skin; Rolan regards him with the same disdain that Gale used to feel towards his upperclassmen when he was a young boy.

Magic has always been his first and truest love, almost since the day he was born. Even before Mystra took interest in him, he was hailed as a prodigy. His instructors praised the ease with which he took to his studies. It came naturally to him—the Weave unveiled itself plainly before his eyes while his peers struggled to grasp a single thread. His teachers recommended and pushed for his advancement, his mother couldn’t be prouder.

But the thing about children who grow up on a pedestal is that their peers have to look up to meet their eyes. Gale excelled at his studies, advancing through Introductory Abjuration and The Fundamentals of Divination and soon found himself buried in textbooks titled The Metaphysics of Transmutation and The Ethics of Enchantment. He was placed beside students ten years his senior and lacked any of their social graces.The only thing he had in common with his classmates was an interest in the arcane.

Gale would listen to the students next to him chatting and try to follow their lead. They would discuss their struggles in other courses, so Gale did the same. But his words were met with silent scorn and ridicule. When he tried to discuss his studies, he was perceived as arrogant. When he tried to mention his personal projects, people assumed he was bragging. In time, he simply stopped saying much of anything at all, instead devoting more of his time to his studies. He would advance further, only widening the gap between him and other children his age.

He’d had Tara, for the longest time his first and only friend. When he told her about the cruel words he heard from older children, she cursed them so that any cruel word left their lips as a harmless bubble. It was a source of endless amusem*nt, when someone tried to deride Gale behind his back, only for a series of pink bubbles to swallow their voice. The look of shock and embarrassment on their faces would nearly send Gale into a fit of giggles. The other students quickly took notice and delighted in another’s magical mishap. When they realized it was a curse, it started a string of curses and counter-curses among the students that eventually needed to be altogether banned.

It turned the bitter envy slithering around his heart into a source of joy. Regardless of the difficulties Gale faced in his studies, Tara was there, always, waiting for him. She would hop up from his pillow, stretch out her wings, then press her head into the palm of his hand, silently asking to be pampered. Any tears he shed were very quickly caught by her feathers, and on the days he just wanted to crawl into bed and hide from the world, Tara would tuck herself into his arms, her whole body gently purring next to his heart. He would instinctively calm, brushing his hands over her smooth fur until he drifted into a pleasant dream.

Gale can’t imagine that it would be any easier as a tiefling, in a city biased towards the divine. Gale is glad, then, that Rolan has people to rely on.

“I think our best best is going to be focusing on crowd control,” Gale murmurs, tapping a finger against his lips. “Assuming we’ll have to run, we’re best suited to stalling the guards while the prisoners escape.”

Rolan looks down at his own spellbook in his lap. “Ah.” He sounds almost sheepish.

“What is it?” Gale asks kindly in the face of Rolan’s obvious discomfort.

Rolan’s hackles raise immediately, purposefully turning his face away so that he doesn’t have to see the older wizard’s expression. “I don’t have many options for that role. The only decent spell I have in that vein is Color Spray, well… my version of it anyway.”

Gale pauses, his pointer finger still extended where it traces beneath a line of text in his spellbook. Slowly, he looks up, blinking owlishly at the young man’s casual admission. Rolan still keeps his gaze fixed firmly on the far door at the end of the room, refusing to meet Gale’s eyes. Rolan fidgets in place, nervous in a way Gale hasn’t observed before. Rolan holds his spellbook close to his chest, the cover tilted to completely obscure its text from Gale’s view. A pointed nail taps irritably against the leather cover, leaving a series of pinpricks in the old hide.

It’s a quality spellbook, Gale notes, the kind you give a burgeoning young wizard on their first day at school. Gale’s mother has one much like it kept safe in a chest in her attic, next to Gale’s knitted baby blanket and a lopsided drawing of Tara. Rolan’s is clearly well-loved, stains weathered into the cover from years of hands smoothing across the hide, the spine cracked from use so that the pages no longer lay flat.

“Your version of Color Spray?” Gale asks after a long period of silence.

Rolan’s gaze flicks towards him, head still fixed firmly forward. “Ah, yes. A few minor alterations to refine the spellcraft, nothing dramatic.”

Alterations to refine one of the most fundamental spells within every wizard’s repertoire. That’s like claiming to have improved the concept of caramelizing onions. It’s not unusual for young wizards to try their hand at modifying basic spells. Every wizard adds their own flair to their formulas—usually little more than adding cosmetic changes to fit their own sensibilities. Occasionally, they’ll try their hand at “improving” arcane staples like Shield, but it’s exceedingly rare for a fledgling mage to come up with something that’s both stable and repeatable. There’s a reason that wizards dedicate their lives to studying the Weave—without care it can become a violent, fickle mistress. One need look no farther than your own volatile magic for evidence of that.

Either Rolan is being overly modest or he truly has no idea of the magnitude of what he’s claiming.

Even asking to see another wizard’s spellbook is a massive overstep without any sort of formal contract in place. But… Gale hasn’t gotten to where he is without toeing the line of a few boundaries. “Forgive me if I’m being a bit presumptuous, but would you be willing to allow me a brief glimpse?” Rolan’s answering glare is both scathing and immediate. Gale holds up both his hands in a placating gesture. “Not to copy it, mind you! I simply find myself fascinated by the idea of an altered Color Spray.”

Rolan’s glare softens minutely at the gentle stroke to his ego, but he still narrows his eyes, regarding Gale with caution, his guard raised. Understandably so, given the viciousness of spell theft in academic circles. However, Gale is already infamous enough among fellow wizards, he has no need to codify another spell under his name. His interest is fueled by simple curiosity, not any desire for fame or fortune.

“I’ll let you copy down Gale’s Gift of Gab in exchange,” Gale offers, knowing the promise of a free spell is like catnip for wizards.

Rolan raises an eyebrow, eyes still narrowed slightly. “I’ve never heard of that spell. What does it do?”

“You wouldn’t have—I made it for myself and never shared it with anyone.” Gale laughs easily. “Have you ever said something foolish, only to immediately wish you could undo it?”

Rolan tilts his head, clearly still perplexed. “No, never,” he lies.

Gale smiles to himself at the safety Rolan finds in his pride. Oh, to be young again. “Well, should you ever find yourself in a situation where you do, Gale’s Gift of Gab lets you do exactly that.”

Rolan’s suspicion momentarily flees, his eyebrows raising in surprise edged with amusem*nt. “How?”

“I’ll tell you, if you let me see that spell of yours,” Gale hums in a singsong voice.

Rolan purses his lips, glancing down at his spellbook, to Gale, then back again, silently debating with himself. Gale waits patiently, perhaps with mild amusem*nt as he watches the argument happening behind Rolan’s eyes. With a soft sigh of resignation, Rolan finally allows his spellbook to fall open, flipping quickly through the pages before Gale can view the runes haphazardly scribbled in their margins. He stops on a spread of two pages, the words “Rolan’s Color Spray” written in neat Common at the top.

“Here,” Rolan says, slightly reserved as he slides the book onto his knee closest to Gale.

Gale peers down at the book, his already dark eyes deepening with eager curiosity. He can’t help but smile to himself, recognizing the eager and haphazard scrawl of an excited young wizard. This book is clearly Rolan’s working space, in addition to his final draft. Lines of runes and careful instructions have been written then scribbled out, copied below with a modified set of instructions, only for that, too, to be scratched out. Gale used to do the same when he was younger, though over time he learned to use a separate book for brainstorming, only copying the spell into his spellbook proper once it was finalized.

Seeing Rolan’s work laid out before him takes Gale back to the frost-bitten days of his youth, sitting cross-legged beneath the oak tree in his backyard, spellbook spread across his lap. Dark ink stained his fingertips, his level of focus measured by the number of soot-gray stains smeared across his cheeks and chin. Tara curled against his side, basking in the mid-afternoon sunshine. When she desired more attention than the young wizard gave her, she laid one careful paw over his thigh, removing it only after Gale scratched behind her ears. Gale would jot notes and ideas furiously onto the paper, despearate to grasp the thread of inspiration before it vanished.

His mother would walk out into the backyard, a dishtowel wrung between her hands. Morena would call his name, beckoning him out of the spring chill to the dinner table. The savory smell of pork pie would waft through the window, promising a warm, hearty meal. The only thing more enticing than magic to a young Gale was good food. The boy would scramble quickly to his feet, spellbook and supplies bundled haphazardly in his arms, and race across the yard to his mother’s side. She would catch him with a hand on the back of his head, fingers carding through long, untamed hair. Her arms were always welcoming and gentle, heedless of the progress Gale made in his studies. In those long, lonely afternoons, his mother always offered him a soft place to fall.

Gale’s eyes slowly widen as he traces Rolan’s work with his fingertip. “This is brilliant,” he gasps. “The use of quartz shavings in place of sand to make use of its alchemical composition is genius!”

Rolan startles for a brief moment, as if surprised by Gale’s praise. Then he remembers to don his persona and settles back into haughty confidence. “It’s really quite obvious when you spare the time to consider it. Any gemstone has more stored energy that simple rock, so naturally using that as a material component would heighten the effect.”

Gale shakes his head. “You’re too modest, my friend.” Rolan pauses, looking to Gale with wide, unclouded eyes. “Reworking a spell without compromising its integrity is no easy feat. You have much to be proud of.”

Rolan hums idly in the back of his throat, turning to the end of the section. “There are still improvements to be made,” he says dismissively. “I’ll have much to learn from Lorroakan once I get to Baldur’s Gate.”

A sudden chill trickles down the knobs of Gale’s spine. “Lorroakan,” he murmurs under his breath. “You’re to be his apprentice, if I recall?”

Pride swells within Rolan’s chest, pushing his shoulders up to their full height. He cuts a proud figure against the dark stones of Moonrise. “I am. It’s a rare honor, indeed.”

Gale has never met the man, nor had any dealings with him at all. But every wizard’s favorite pastime, apart from pursuing godhood, is gossip. Lorroakan entered the public eye out of almost nowhere a decade ago when he purchased Ramazith’s Tower, which had stood empty for nearly a century prior. Little was known about the reclusive wizard, but he very quickly gained a reputation for being abrasive and conceited, with a nasty temper. But heads full of hot air and steam were hardly rare among wizards; the man was altogether unremarkable, save for his choice of real estate. The Recluse of Ramazith, people called him, well-known among wizards on the Sword Coast for hoarding his arcane knowledge within the stone walls of his tower, never venturing beyond the threshold into the sun.

Nothing that Gale has heard suggests that Lorroakan has any genuine interest in acting as a mentor. Which either means Rolan is lying about his apprenticeship, or Lorroakan has some other use for the young man. And from what Gale has seen, Rolan’s poker face leaves much to be desired. Unease curdles beneath the surface of Gale’s skin.

“How did you become acquainted with him, if you don’t mind my asking?” Gale ventures, gently teasing around the edges of the real question he wants to ask.

Rolan deflates ever so slightly, looking almost sheepish as his eyes dart away. “Truth be told, I sent letters to a number of wizards throughout the Heartlands. Lorroakan was the only one to write back.”

Gale wonders if he should take offense to the fact that he never received a letter. Then again, he hasn’t exactly been keeping up with his correspondence. There’s an ever-growing pile of missives waiting for him back in his study, dating to his first day of self-imposed isolation. If he had seen it, would he have bothered to send a response? Perhaps, though Gale would never have agreed to take the boy on as a student. Not only because of the orb, but because he had no need of one. He had Tara and she was more than enough companionship. It doesn’t surprise Gale that few wizards bothered to respond. It shocks him more than Lorroakan did.

The disquiet slithering around his heart only tightens.

“He offered me the opportunity to come study under him in Baldur’s Gate. Obviously, I would be a fool to turn down a chance like that.”

Gale had felt so, so special when Mystra turned her eyes towards him. Elminster simply strode onto his mother’s porch one day, drawn by a sudden burst of fire and a young boy hiding his face in his mother’s skirts. Elminster spoke of potential and power, creation and destruction, responsibility and education. The conversation went over young Gale’s head, too busy mourning their neighbor’s rose bushes, guilt-laden tears streaming from his eyes.

But his mother’s relief at Elminster’s offer to mentor Gale was palpable. Gale’s magic had been wild and untamed nearly since birth—his uncoordinated, flailing limbs grasped threads of the Weave even in his cradle. Arcane energy passed across his unblemished skin with an ease and intensity that was nearly unheard of, even among the strongest sorcerers.

Gale’s sudden bursts of magic were a constant source of stress for Morena Dekarios. Gale was a sweet, sensitive boy, and that only made his magic more unpredictable. He could summon a dozen white rabbits or set the neighbor’s roses ablaze without ever intending to cast a spell.The promise of good training, under Elminster himself, no less, seemed a godsend at the time. He might very well have been sent by a god—training a new generation of Mystra’s Chosen in preparation for her Return.

Elminster directed the course of his childhood, through study and prayer, to Blackstaff, and then his first trials as a young wizard. When Mystra first showed her face to him, Gale had long prayed to the dead goddess without hope of an answer. At first she came to him in his dreams, gazing upon his unconscious mind and praising him for the intelligence she found within. When he returned to the waking world, sonorous laughter would echo through the halls of his mind. That was in the year before Mystra’s Return, when the world still thought Cyric had slain the goddess for good. Gale thought those visions as little more than the pleasant imaginings of a lonely young man.

Even when news broke of her resurrection, Gale still struggled to believe that the woman from his dreams could be the Mother of All Magic herself. Mystra had been dead for nearly a century, surely she would have more important things to do than visit the dreams of a young man. But one starry night, in Blackstaff Academy’s observatory, Gale peered through a telescope at the stars. This late in the evening, all the other apprentices had retired for the evening. Gale alone stayed up, unable to sleep, so instead he looked at the stars. It was then that a tall, slender woman, ageless in her ethereal beauty, walked out of a moonbeam and into Gale’s sight.

The Weave itself swirled in her piercing blue eyes, and Gale could no longer deny the reality of his nighttime visitor. She spent the evening with him, answering his questions, tracing runes for archaic spells into the lines of his palm, talking and giving him all the attention that none of his peers ever dared. She disappeared in the morning light with a promise to return soon. From then on, her voice would ring through his mind during prayer—praising him for his successes, granting him her blessing when he pleaded for aid. She kept her promises and on starry nights when the sky was clear, she would craft a vessel of flesh and blood to contain her soul, and grant Gale the pleasure of her company.

Gale asked, once, what it was that drew her to him, of all the people in the world. Mystra went quiet for a long time. So long, that Gale began to fear he’d crossed an invisible line or violated the unwritten terms of the contract between him and the Lady of Magic. But just before Gale fell to his knees and begged for forgiveness, Mystra answered, her voice woven into his very skin.

“When you reach into the Weave you touch the very essence of my being. My power flows into you and yours into me. I feel the potential inside you, and the loneliness,” she crooned. “For nearly a hundred years I waited for someone to come find me. You have been waiting a long time, too.”

Gale’s heart thundered in his chest as Mystra’s voice flowed through his veins like warm syrup, thick and tender. She leaned so close that for a moment he thought she might kiss him. His lips tingled with the thought. It had been so long since his last attempts at teen romance. Mystra leaned close enough that were she mortal, he would feel her breath on his cheek. But Mystra had no need of lungs, and instead on his cheek he felt the radiation of pure, raw, energy.

But at the last moment, Mystra pulled away, leaving him wanting. “You are a good wizard, with a bright future ahead of you,” Mystra hummed. “But under the proper care, you could be brilliant.”

Against the night sky, stars formed a halo around her brow. Gale’s years of loneliness and solitude finally had meaning, because they brought him Mystra. He’d finally been given a purpose. Mystra took up the mantle of his mentor, then his lover as the years passed. He thought his days of loneliness to be over. Little did he realize just how loneliness and Mystra wove themselves together.

Seeing Rolan’s youthful eagerness and dedication to his teacher unravels a thread deep within Gale’s heart. Gale has managed to do the impossible and wound the clock back to a decade hence; now he stares into a mirror, a reflection of his own ambition as a young man. A decade ago when Mystra offered him the world, Gale saw only his own unhappiness and everything he stood to gain. But looking at Rolan today, he sees everything the man has to lose.

Gale’s words tread carefully as they leave his lips—he knows the sudden drop that awaits should he falter. “You’ve already given much just to seize this opportunity.”

Rolan scoffs. “Cal, Lia, and I were driven out of Elturel, anyway. We had to find somewhere else to live.”

Gale swallows thickly. It doesn’t bring him comfort to know Rolan has no caretakers to worry after him. Gale’s mother had always fretted when Mystra came to spirit him away. Gale would be gone for months at a time, content and caged within the safety of Mystra’s domain. Morena knew that Mystra was a goddess, but Gale was her son, and it ached to know he was so far out of her reach. If Gale needed her, Morena would be unable to hear his call. Despite his mother’s worries, Gale hadn’t listened.

He isn’t sure there’s anything his mother could have said to steer him away from the Lady of Mysteries. But at least she was there after his fall from grace, to pick him up out of the rubble and patch up his wounds.

“Either way, if Lorroakan puts as much work into teaching you as you’ve put into reaching him, then you’ll have a bright future ahead of you,” Gale says with false cheer.

The corners of Rolan’s mouth pinch together and he narrows his eyes at Gale. “Have you been talking to Lia? You’re beginning to sound just like her.”

When you lay with the Goddess of Magic, you dedicate yourself to her fully. She is a god, and a lowly human boy must prove himself worthy of her love and attention. When Mystra has a thousand worshippers the world over all pledging their devotion, how is one boy meant to compare? But Gale was determined to be her most devoted lover, to worship her better than the rest, to prove himself worthy of her gift and affection. He worshipped at her altar day in and day out, took up her mantle in preserving the Weave, gave her every piece he had to give, mind, body, and soul.

When she had a dozen other lovers vying for her attention, and a thousand voices constantly whispering in her ear, Gale needed to love her loud enough to drown out the din. And for a time he did. Or so he thought.

But the years passed, and Gale stopped being the young man Mystra had favored. He grew older, his joints began to ache, and his hair went gray at the temples. Mystra was a voracious lover, and he struggled to match her libido the way he did in his youth. His mortal form got in the way as he suffered the pains of aging—weight gain, carpal tunnel, indigestion—all normal, human ailments that come with age, but inconvenient to immutable, unchanging Mystra. What use did she have for a lover whose knees ached in heavy rain when she could have another bright, young man in the prime of his life?

As Gale lay in bed, icing his old knee injury, he never expected Mystra to comfort him. That wasn’t the way of things. She had other, far more important matters to attend to than an ailing lover. But from time to time, he imagined what it would be like, if things were different and he had a lover who would take care of him the way he tried to care for Mystra.

What would it be ike to have a lover cook you a warm meal, soothe your aches, choose you in all your imperfect, human faults? He entertained thoughts of starting a family, of his mother’s unbridled joy at being made a grandmother, holidays spent by the hearth of his childhood home. Then he would quickly brush the thought away with a hint of melancholy. With Mystra, he could never have children. Even if he tried to raise a child on his own, he wouldn’t be able to devote himself to them the way they deserved, not when Mystra held so much of his heart.

It was for the best. It wasn’t as if he’d ever particularly wanted children. He’d known from an early age that a life at Mystra’s altar meant sacrificing parts of himself for her favor. This was just another piece of himself he had to set aside.

He’d sacrificed so much over the years, and still Mystra asked him to sacrifice more.

What did he have left with everything that made his life worthwhile stripped away? Every spell he casts these days leaves an acrid aftertaste in the back of his throat, bitterness rising to fill the empty chambers of a heart that used to thrum with joy. Magic is the source of his joy, but so, too, is it the source of inconceivable heartache.

He cannot cast a spell without remembering everything he’s lost. When he closes his eyes and reaches for the Weave, he sees how it draws away. The orb consumes every piece of the Weave it touches, leaving only frayed, haggard threads in its place. The Weave has flowed through his fingers practically since he was born, and for the first time it feels so impossibly far away.

When did his love for magic sour? When did ambition and pride start to curdle the honeyed joy within his chest? When did love and loathing knot themselves together and tighten painfully around his heart?

Gale laughs at Rolan’s accusation, and melancholy weaves through the sound. “No, but she sounds like she has a good head on her shoulders.”

Rolan scowls. “It won’t do her any good if she doesn’t use it from time to time. She always lets the soft heart get in the way of taking the easiest path.”

Gale studies Rolan for a long moment, eyes tracing the furrow in his brow and the twist of his mouth. Outwardly, the man shows frustration and anger towards his sister. But over the past three months he’s learned to peel away your anger so that the fear it hides can shine through. He sees that in Rolan now, the clear worry and care that he holds for his siblings, the same way you care for your friends.

“A soft heart isn’t always a weakness,” Gale says slowly. “And a keen mind can fail you just as easily as any other sense.” Rolan peers at him with a quizzical expression. “Raw intelligence is only one tool at your disposal—it means nothing on its own. Even Elminster himself has been tricked from time to time.”

Gale lifts his gaze, looking towards where you, Astarion, and Karlach still sit on the oven. Astarion and Karlach lean into each other, nearly falling over with laughter. Astarion holds a sheaf of crumbling vellum in one hand, the other splayed across his chest as he reads. He smiles so wide that the creases around his mouth never disappear and his fangs show plainly. Karlach has one arm around his shoulders, her head thrown back in raucous laughter. Her other arm curls around you, as you stare blankly straight ahead, pressed tight against her side.

Gale can’t help but smile, the sun rising over his heart. “It’s good to keep people who see the world differently by your side.” He looks back to Rolan, who watches the display with an almost wistful gaze. “And it’s good to listen. You’ll be surprised at all the ways someone can be smart.”

Rolan rolls his eyes. “They’re plenty smart, that’s not the problem.” He shifts uncomfortably against the wall, scowling briefly. “But your friend is right. I’m the eldest, it’s my job to keep them out of trouble, not the other way around.”

“My friend has a protective streak longer than the Chionthar and stubbornness to rival a deep rothé.” Gale huffs out a laugh. “Protecting your siblings is a noble goal, but they want to protect you just as much as you want to protect them. You’ll all save yourselves a lot of strife if you just accept that you’re all going to look out for each other.”

Rolan winces like Gale’s words tore the stitches out of a bleeding wound. “They’re not my siblings,” he says almost automatically. It’s very clearly a correction he’s had to voice many, many times before..

“Oh.” Gale blinks. It’s unusual for him to make that kind of blunder—if anything he often has to be told outright what most people are able to discern through guesswork and social deduction. Gale’s logical reasoning is better suited to academic pursuits, rather than interpersonal ones. “My apologies, for some reason I assumed—”

“Most people do,” Rolan cuts in, mouth twisting into a scowl. “Cal and Lia are siblings. I only grew up with them.”

Gale considers Rolan, taking in the young man’s suddenly stiffened shoulders and the firm set of his jaw. Rolan’s gaze is fixed straight ahead, hazy and unseeing. Shadows of childhood memories flicker across the backs of his eyes, imposed over the visage of Moonrise’s dirty kitchen.

Rolan and his mother lived in the ramshackle house next door at first. That was how the three of them met. Their childhood days in Elturel were spent running through the cobbled streets of the Dock District, and acting out grand adventures in the Winter Garden. Every few days, Rolan’s mother left him with Cal and Lia’s family while the shipping vessel she worked on set out to sea. Then, one day, she never came back. He was extremely lucky Cal and Lia’s family chose to take him in. In another life he was just another street urchin, sick and starving in the streets.

But no matter how much Cal and their mother insisted he was family, Rolan could never shake the feeling that he didn’t belong. Everyone in their small community knew Rolan’s situation. Even those that didn’t could guess upon seeing the four of them together. Cal and Lia shared their mother’s dark hair and orange eyes. Rolan, with his magic and his taller build stood out like a sore thumb.

Rolan was grateful that they provided him a home, but he would always be different. The wizard, the voice of reason, the orphan boy they took in out of the goodness of their hearts.

Gale’s lips press together in a thin line. He knows that feeling of isolation well, and the futility of trying to measure up to an ideal no person could ever hope to meet. The guilt and shame he feels at having failed is something he still struggles with to this day. He recognizes that guilt in the crack in his voice when he says his Cal and Lia’s names, the shame evident in his desperate attempt to save them.

“In that case, I think my previous statement rings even truer,” Gale hums. At Rolan’s questioning gaze, Gale continues. “In some ways, the bonds we choose to forge are even stronger than those written in our blood. Cal and Lia clearly must value you a great deal to follow you all the way from Elturel to Baldur’s Gate.”

Rolan’s shoulders hitch, pulling inward with a bitter scowl. “As I said, everyone cast out of Elturel needed somewhere to go. Baldur’s Gate is as good a location as any other.” Rolan waves a hand dismissively. “And I have what most of the others fleeing Elturel don’t—guaranteed passage into Baldur’s Gate and a job awaiting me there. You would be a fool to choose a different path when you already have a meal ticket.”

Rolan wears a severe, pinched expression as his voice leaves an acetic taste on his tongue. It’s a harsh way to view their circ*mstances. But it’s the reality they live in. Without his apprenticeship with Lorroakan—without his arcane prowess—Rolan is just another tiefling refugee in a crowd of hundreds.

Rolan’s words echo ones Gale has had many times over throughout his life. Without his magic and the gifts it’s given him, Gale is just another mouth to feed—a strain on his poor mother, just another lonely, obnoxious boy on the streets of Waterdeep. Gale knows well how people him annoying, boring, and tiresome. Even as a teen, Gale would note when his own mother’s eyes glazed over as he gushed about the newest spell he was practicing. That isn’t a habit he’s managed to shake. He knows that the only reason people bother listening to what he has to say is because of the power he holds and the possibility of what Gale can offer them. At least, they used to bother listening to him.

Hearing those thoughts reflected back at him by someone as young and talented as Rolan makes the orb pulse with a hollow ache.

Gale leans forward to catch Rolan’s gaze. “Do you truly think your friends so pragmatically minded?” Gale’s dark eyes shining with a somber understanding. “You yourself said that Lia’s heart was too soft for her own good. Do you think yourself the sole exception in that heart of hers?”

Hm. Now that he thinks about it, he can’t ever recall you drifting away in the middle of conversation. Despite the significant drawbacks that came with his continued presence, you still entertained his long-winded discussions. Even when you made it clear you thought he was being an ass, your attention never waned.

How strange.

Rolan blinks, stunned out of his bitter thoughts. Of course he doesn’t think Cal and Lia would think of anyone that way. The only manipulation he’s ever seen from them was when they worked together to charm rich tourists into offering up some coin. Lia’s the type of person who feels sympathy for the animals killed to put food on her plate. He doesn’t think Cal is capable of having a single mean thought about anyone.

Gale smiles to himself, as he watches the gears begin to turn behind Rolan’s eyes once more. He hopes that his words have planted a seed of doubt within Rolan’s heart that might one day flower into something truly beautiful. Rolan’s future is far too bright for him to ruin it because of baseless fears.

But no matter how much you water it, any seed needs time to grow. For now, he and Rolan have other matters to discuss.

“Now.” Gale turns to a blank page of his spellbook and furiously begins enscribing a familiar spell onto the paper, tugging at the strands of the Weave beneath his fingertips. “Allow me just a few moments to transcribe Gift of Gab and it’s all yours.”

Karlach stands up from the stone table, arms stretched wide overhead as she works out the knots in her shoulders and lower back. “Gods, how long has it been?” she groans, pinwheeling her arms.

“About forty minutes by my estimate,” Astarion hums, slipping the pages of Volo’s book into his pack.

Karlach groans, head tossed back and facing the ceiling. “It’s so boring.”

“I know, Karlach, dear, but just think, once Halsin gets back I’m sure we’ll have plenty of cultists for you to behead,” Astarion soothes with far too much cheer.

“I hope so,” Karlach huffs. “It’s gonna be real disappointing if it turns out we waited this long and we don’t get to spill some blood.”

“I can certainly agree with that,” Astarion hums. “I’m feeling a bit peckish.”

Karlach glances around at the gathered company, prepared to suggest someone offer up their wrist. But she quickly realizes the only option is Rolan, as she and Gale can’t contribute and you already offered up your neck the previous night. Their alliance with Rolan is already tentative at best. She doesn’t think he’d be as easygoing as your group is about being offered up as a vampire appetizer.

With a sigh Karlach shakes her head. “I need to go take a piss. Maybe run around the tower a few times.”

Gale tosses her a concerned look. “I wouldn’t recommend doing that without company.”

Karlach blinks at him. “What, pissing?”

“No, running around the tower,” Gale huffs. “Who knows what trouble you might run into out there?”

Karlach sighs reluctantly. “Fine, I suppose you have a point. I’ll just piss then.”

Astarion’s eyes follow Karlach as she walks into the hallway you passed through previously. Sudden relief washes over him as he quickly shifts closer to you, filling the space that Karlach’s absence left vacant. He’s been trying to think of a way to surreptitiously get you alone for a few minutes now, ever since he realized you stopped responding to his recitation of Volo’s ridiculous prose. He and Karlach laughed uproariously, all while you stared vacantly ahead, completely unreactive even as you sought Karlach’s warmth.

His bones grew restless beneath his skin, knowing something had happened to you, but unable to think of a way to fix it without drawing your allies’ attention. Just as before, after your outburst with Rolan, he knew there was no chance of you speaking honestly in Karlach and Gale’s presence. Whether you’d tell even him the truth was doubtful, but he’s certainly broken more ground than any of the others.

Astarion gently collects your hand off the stone oven, smoothing his thumb over your scarred knuckles. “Darling?” he calls softly. “Where have you gone?”

Sinuous meat slip-sliding between the walls, tendrils of flesh digging into the gaps between the stones, prying open the bars of their stone prison. The tower creaks and groans, and something far, far below the earth calls out to you. Your mind follows that siren song, descending into the bowels of the tower where a familiar presence beckons you with open arms.

-Gave-

---us- -EVERYTHING---

Astarion’s touch sears the flesh beneath his hand, pulling you back into your body as a line of fire travels up the length of your arm. You blink, the tower’s kitchens coming back into focus as your senses abruptly reawaken. The stone beneath your free palm holds a lingering warmth, the remnants of Karlach’s body heat trapped within. A fine layer of dust grits the surface of your skin, and it smears across Astarion’s fingers where he touches you. Woodsmoke rises from the burning hearth in wispy gray clouds the smell of soot and ash. A thin, dreamy haze fills the kitchens, stinging your eyes and blurring your vision. Or perhaps the clouds aren’t there at all, and your eyes simply refuse to focus.

You meet the concern in Astarion’s eyes with a blank mask, pushing down your confusion. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

Astarion’s mouth pinches severely at the corners, gaze piercing through your poor acting. You’re still hiding under the cover of his lies, using him as a shield to keep the others from realizing just how unsettled you are. Your moods are as wild as nature’s wrath—a restless ocean of churning nerves, your blank face the unnatural stillness in the eye of the storm, and anger that burns like a raging wildfire.

The others think Astarion able to tame the destruction, to steal the oxygen from your lungs with a kiss and let the flames choke on their own ash. They trust that he’s selfish enough to find another solution should the fire begin to lick his skin. He plays the part well enough, always gathering you into his arms in the aftermath. But he’s no more able to tame you than he could nature itself. He shields your still smoldering embers from sight with his body, but the storm still surges beneath your skin. He wishes he had the power the others think he does. But all he can do is watch as a flood sweeps away the parts of you he adores.

Astarion exhales a sigh of frustration. “When’s the last time you slept well, dearest?” he asks, eyebrow raised.

“Never, elves don’t sleep.”

He rolls his eyes and flicks your forehead. “Clever. Now answer the question.”

You pause, turning back the clock and gazing upon your memories one by one. You’ve never once had a restful night. Coming to the Shadowlands, and then Moonrise, has only worsened an affliction that’s plagued you as long as you can remember. Every night is the same. You take your place on your bedroll and close your eyes. As soon as reverie draws near, your body jolts, dreading the visions it knows will come. But eventually it falls, and you relive forgotten moments of bloodstained altars, still pulsing organs hanging from meathooks, screams of unimaginable agony. You wake. You pant into the dark as lust surges through your veins against your will.

Often you would wake to Astarion’s fangs in your neck, his tongue laving against your skin, soft moans tucked beneath your chin. Once he realized you were awake he’d pull back, your own scarlet blood spilling down his chin.

He leveled you with that sultry gaze of his and purred into your ear. “Aren’t you a delectable little treat?” He smoothed a hand from your shoulder, to your sternum, then down the length of your breastbone. “I can taste it, you know. How aroused you are. You must have been having a lovely dream.”

You were. But you shouldn’t have been. You should feel horrified. But that emotion wasn’t there, because there’s something wrong in you, some part of you that broke long ago and came to associate depravity with pleasure. Your chest heaved beneath Astarion’s hand as it moved down your torso.

“Were you dreaming of me, sweet thing?” he crooned “And all our nights together?”

You shook your head. “No.” You never want him to star in your dreams. Your mind would tear him apart.

“Oh?” That seemed to surprise Astarion. “Then I’d love to see just what it is that has you so hot and bothered. I can be whoever it is you’re dreaming of.”

The brush of his mind against yours was a familiar sensation, curious and eager to feel the inside of your skull. You forcefully shuttered your mind, abruptly cutting off the connection. You can’t let him see. You can’t let anyone see the barbarity that you take pleasure in. As much as Astarion totes himself as a connoisseur of hedonism and depravity, the memories dwelling within your mind are something else. It’s one thing to enjoy a little violence and bloodshed, it’s another to play around in someone’s open chest cavity while you f*ck them.

You curled a hand around the back of Astarion’s neck and pulled him down for a heated kiss, your own blood smeared across both your mouths. “Make me forget,” you begged.

Astarion hummed into your mouth. “Oh, I see,” he purred. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll take care of you.”

For a while you did forget, the whole of your mind filled with Astarion and nothing else. But soon enough he would shrug his clothes back on and slip through the opening of your tent, disappearing back into the dark. You would be left alone with yourself and all your sins. Sometimes, the heaviness in your limbs and the warm afterglow would pull you into a dreamless reverie. But sometimes you would close your eyes only to return to that vile place within your mind.

No matter what, your rest was middling at best. Were it not for your companions, you would think that was simply the way of things, that exhaustion and nightmares were the default state of being. But your companions slept through the night. Rarely did they speak of strange dreams. Some of them woke easily, refreshed, and ready to tackle the day’s challenges.

You can only remember one night where your sleep felt restful and you awoke feeling refreshed. It was the night you awoke to a body eviscerated at your feet that you couldn’t remember killing. Despite the gore and your own hands covered in viscera you weren’t awake to enjoy, your rest was strangely peaceful.

But obviously, you’re not going to say that out loud. “I slept well after you killed me,” you finally answer.

That admission doesn’t do anything to please Astarion nor smooth the furrow from his brow. He considers you for a long moment, his thumb still smoothing over the ridges of your knuckles. Once again he finds himself at a loss. He doesn’t know how to make this any easier for you. Hells, he barely gets any peace from his own memories most nights. It’s only with you that he’s found any measure of comfort. You’ve found comfort in him, too, but it isn’t enough anymore. He doesn’t know what would be.

If you can’t trance without waking, then the next best thing would be to just… stop, wouldn’t it? At different points, everyone in your group has been able to rest for a day, haven’t they? You rarely take everyone with you at once; really only when you’re on the move. Astarion is a mainstay in your party composition, but even he’s been told to stay back at times. He’d find some poor squirrel or rabbit, drain them into a goblet, and then find a sunny spot to read.

One time he’d even let Karlach convince him to try swimming in the river. Afterwards they both dried off, completely naked in the middle of camp. Karlach laughed the whole time, only to laugh even harder when she saw Astarion’s wild head of curls. Despite how much he hated rolling in the mud and getting dirt under his nails, these were the most restful, happiest days in his memory.

But you’ve never allowed yourself that peace. Of all your allies, you’re the only one who’s fought every single day. You deserve that happiness, too, don’t you?

“How about this.” Astarion leans forward, reaching up to gently tuck an errant lock of hair behind your pointed ear. “Once Halsin gets back and you give us your grand flawless plan for breaking the prisoners out of Moonrise, you head back to camp and let us do all the hard work, hm?”

Your gaze immediately sharpens, snapping like a whip to meet his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous,” you hiss, that familiar bullheaded temper rising to the surface.

Astarion’s own smile dissolves. “I’m not. You’re exhausted. You can’t keep going like this.”

You pull away from his grasp, leaving his hands to fall limply back to his side. You abruptly stand, stumbling on your feet. You spread out your arms like a baby bird testing its feathers for the first time. It does nothing to ease Astarion’s worries. “I’m fine,” you lie.

Astarion stands with you, his hands coming up to hover inches away from your skin, ready to catch you should the wax melt from your wings. “You can say that all you like but you’re not going to fool me.”

His mind still wanders back to that night, pacing in front of the broken window, waiting for you to climb back through. His dead heart seemed to beat in his throat. Surely you had some reason for climbing outside. You must have seen something on the horizon, a ship approaching the pier maybe? You were furious at Gale for considering sacrificing himself on Mystra’s order so surely you wouldn’t… you wouldn’t. He counted a hundred seconds before he followed you out, and what he found was somehow both better and worse than he was expecting.

If he hadn’t heard you leave… If he hadn’t followed you…

He can’t lose you. Not when he’s only just realized how much he wants you. It terrifies him how your life teeters on the edge.

You meet his words with a hiss. “You’re my team. I’m responsible for all of you,” you snap.

Astarion’s eyes harden, the rubies in his gaze sharpening to match his fangs. “It’s a team, do you not understand what that means?” He huffs out a breath of frustration. “We work together.”

A tenday ago he would balk at the words coming out of his mouth. He sounds like one of the heroic fools from the tales Wyll loves so dearly; the kind that rescue kittens from trees and help old grandmothers cross the street and save the city without ever asking for anything in return. Damn you for forcing him to espouse the merits of, ugh, friendship, but it’s the only way to get through to you.

Astarion clicks his tongue admonishingly. “Stubborn as you are, you couldn’t have made it this far on your own.”

“I know that.”

“Then why can’t you trust us?” Astarion presses, his words seeking the gaps in your armor and prying them apart. “Do you think we’re just going to fall apart without you watching our every move?”

At one point that may have been true. In the beginning when everyone was constantly looking over their shoulders, hoarding secrets close to their chests, and one wrong move would have half the party holding a knife to your throat. But Astarion can turn his back to the others without fear, his secrets have unfolded, and the daggers no longer point inward, but towards anything that seeks to do him harm. None of your friends need you to remind them to work together—they already know how.

You shake your head. “Of course I trust you—”

“Then take a break,” Astarion begs, both his hands coming up to squeeze your shoulders. “Go back to camp and let us handle this, for once.”

His hands still hold some of the warmth he stole from Karlach. He holds you tight, nearly shaking with the intensity of his plea. You can’t continue on like this. Every day your grasp on the wild magic in your veins loosens, every day you grow more and more reckless. One day it’ll ravage you from the inside out and there will be nothing left of you to hold. You still for minutes at a time, as your mind leaves your body. You nearly stumble down the cliffside into the river, your feet unsteady. You offer up your time, your blood, your magic freely to anyone who asks and keep nothing in reserve. This insatiable need to prove yourself is going to get you killed and Astarion can only stand by your side and watch as every blow you take hurts him just as much.

He doesn’t know what you’re trying to prove, because surely you’ve already done it? You saved a child that’s been trapped for a hundred years, you led the entire Thorm family to their deaths without casting a single spell, you’ve done everything your friends have ever asked of you. And even still, you’ve committed to saving a group of refugees for the second time, putting your lives and your whole mission at risk just to… what? Prove that you can? Spite Ketheric Thorm? Make a wizard you hate stop running into the fire? Astarion doesn’t know what this is but he can’t stand by in silence and let the only person he’s ever wanted throw themselves on their own sword.

Your throat constricts painfully and you shake your head. “I can’t.” You can’t leave. You can’t let them out of your sight. You can’t lose—

---disappeared--

You shake your head violently, both at Astarion’s words and the voice calling out to you. “I won’t leave you,” you gasp. “Not again.”

Astarion searches your face, brows lifting in concern. “Again? What are you talking about?” He rubs his hands over your shoulders. “Is this about the monastery? Darling, that was over a month ago.”

--ABANDONED- -me---

---slave--

“I wouldn’t,” you croak through your closed throat, unable to draw air into your lungs. “I didn’t.”

Astarion’s voice begins to rise in panic. “Dear, I know—”

Crack. Bend. Snap. Twist. “Traitor.” Fire rips through your spine.

“I can’t breathe,” you gasp, clutching at your throat.

Astarion watches in horror as you choke on thin air. Anger turns to desperation with a sickening plunge into frigid waters. His grasp on you weakens as his hands begin to tremble. His racing mind grasps at thin threads of reason. He pulls on them, seeking any means to tether you back to earth, but they all break apart in his hands.

The last sands of the hourglass slip through Astarion’s fingers as you duck out of his grasp. Terror roots his feet to the ground and he stands there, numb as you stumble into the alcove outside the kitchen. His body jumps into action a moment later, following on your heel. You brace a hand on the wall, doubled over as you cough and strain to pull air into your lungs. Outside of the stuffy kitchen, your throat relaxes slightly, and you manage to take the smallest, most middling breath.

Hesitantly, Astarion hangs a few paces back. His palms itch with the need to gather you in his arms again, and hold you close. If he can feel you in his arms, then he knows you’re safe, that you aren’t gambling with your life. No memories or delirium can lay claim to your soul so long as he holds it within his hands. But he knows from experience that you need space to breathe, so he gives it to you, standing back with hands clenching at his sides.

Your lungs slowly fill with air once more. You stare blankly at the stone floor, gasping and heaving as a cold sweat beads across your brow and the nape of your neck. You bring a hand to the base of your skull and feel the ridge of the ugly scar that hides there. A shiver runs down the length of your spine, ice cold blood spilling across the knob of each vertebrae. It throbs painfully, piercing through bone and into the meat of your brain. Twisting, carving, excising. If you press hard enough into that scar, mapping out the crack that your memory fell through, you can feel the jagged edges of your skull, the shards of bone that never quite healed.

Wet, sticky flesh squishes beneath the hand resting on the wall.

You look up and find the stone painted with long fibers of purple meat. It drips down from the rafters, thick, viscous ichor collects in this forgotten corner of the tower. You follow the tendrils of flesh up with your eyes, and see the crack in the wall that your eyes sought before, after the encounter with the blood merchant. The break in the wall seems to have grown wider, darker, more stone cleaved away to reveal the liminal space where reality wears thin. The thick ropes of flesh extending from the crack pulse more intensely, beating to the rhythm of a heartbeat you feel through the tower’s stones.

Astarion’s right. You can’t continue on like this. You reach out to the Weave, mist collecting at your fingertips.

“Darling, what are you—”

You bridge the gap between the stones beneath your feet and the rafters overhead and disappear. Astarion realizes what’s happening a moment too late, diving to catch you just in time for his hands to close around a cloud of mist. He follows the faint echo of magic upwards, catching sight of the underside of your palms before you disappear beyond the bounds of his darkvision.

“What are you doing?” he shouts, unbeating heart caught in his throat. “Get down from there!”

But his protests fall on deaf ears as you approach the yawning void set within the wall. Your footsteps fall heavy on the wood beneath your feet, walking heel-to-toe on the platform set against the stone. A icepick drives through the center of your mind, brain pulsing painfully in rhythm with the writhing flesh beckoning you forward. You wince with every step closer, every footfall sending a jolt of electricity through your bones. The headache grows, threatening to cleave your mind in twain.

But you can’t back down. You need to know what awaits beneath the stones. You’ve run long enough and you can’t any longer. You need to know what you left behind.

Your feet find solid ground on the wooden platform, the tendrils of purple flesh writhing furiously at your approach. “Alright. You’ve won,” you breathe, skating your fingertips across a thick cord of meat. It feels just like the viscera you’ve torn apart with your bare hands. “I’m here, what do you want from me?”

On the ground below, Astarion’s unbeating heart races in his chest. “Wizard! Get over here! Now!” he shouts into the kitchen.

Gale and Rolan both immediately snap their spellbooks shut, scrambling to their feet at Astarion’s frantic call. Constant danger has trained Gale to be ready for battle at a moment’s notice. He reaches Astarion’s side in just a few steps, winding the Weave around his fingertips in preparation.

“What’s happened?” he asks, following Astarion’s line of sight, but when he looks up he sees only darkness.

“Our damned fool of a leader is about to do something stupid,” Astarion spits, his mouth twisting violently in anger.

Gale recognizes the sheer panic hidden beneath that thin veneer and immediately sets to searching the rafters. But no matter how hard he peers into the darkness, nothing will resolve into focus. Even Rolan beside him, struggles to catch sight of anything through the shadows. Rolan can at least make out the shape of the wooden beams high overhead, but nothing more.

Without any alternative, Gale shoots a Firebolt into the ceiling. The mote of fire streaks into the air, clearing the shadows for but a moment. It’s enough time for Gale to make out the shape of you in the corner, and the gaping chasm in the wall before you. But the shadows swell to fill the air once the Firebolt dies and once more Gale is left blind.

“I need to be able to see to teleport up there. I don’t have any other means at the moment,” Gale says mournfully.

“f*ck!” Astarion hisses.

You feel a presence, pulsing at the edge of your mind. You recognize it—not just from the voice that’s haunted you since arriving at Moonrise, but from those hazy first breaths you took on the nautiloid. You draw ever closer, hand smoothing along the pulsating meat that stretches out, hungry and wanting. A spindly tether of flesh reaches out from the gap and curls around your wrist. It draws you closer, pulling your body flush against the wall and you let it.

As soon as your wrist enters the beast’s maw, the cord of flesh clamps around your skin like manacles—firm as iron and just as unyielding. The creature wrenches you in, dislocating your shoulder with a sickening pop. You gasp, the blinding headache momentarily drowned out by the fire bursting within your arm. You would have been pulled through the gap entirely were it not for your hip cracking against the stone. Your free arm instinctively clutches at the crumbling edge of the wall.

Your mind unfurls and for the first time you feel the full extent of the presence that’s been calling to you all this time. The stones of the tower are your very flesh, every man and beast inside your lifeblood. Every life in this tower is yours to command, every thought your own. For a moment your brain gluts itself on every thought of every creature it touches, it swells with energy—power—growing and growing like a mosquito drinking its fill of blood. But your mind wasn’t built to house the thoughts of hundreds within, so it swells and bloats and then finally—pop. And the whole of yourself dissolves into nothingness.

Astarion searches madly around the room for a way into the rafters. He just came from the kitchen, so he knows there’s nothing there. He ducks his head around the corner, relief flooding his veins when he spies a ladder propped against the wall. He dashes for it, uncaring of the cultists glancing his way. He climbs the rungs two at a time, faster than he’s ever scaled anything before. He races across the wooden beam, the foyer wall collapsed just enough for him to slide through. His eyes find you immediately, your robes the one speck of color against the dark stone.

He nearly retches when for the first time, he sees the undulating flesh breaking through the wall. A break in the crossbeam still stands between you, the wood on which he stands threatening to splinter beneath his feet.

“What the hells are you doing?” he shouts across the gap.

But you cannot hear him. Your mind is elsewhere.

Your consciousness finds itself in a vast, empty space. Thousands of thoughts pass through you in wisps of red mist. Great in number they may be, but every mind sings the same song. In Her name, in Her name, in Her name. You flow with the current, but sit outside it. You are not part of the Design. You are the flaw.

A great beast rises from the ocean of thoughts, large enough to blot out the sun—no—large and bright enough to be the sun. For the first time in a month you feel sunlight on your skin, as a greater being chooses to shine its light on you. You feel its presence encircling you, cradling you the way you imagine a mother would if you had one. It holds you within its open palm, observing you, ready to choke the life from your succulent mind should you prove yourself unworthy.

You reach out to the presence with your mind, speaking without words.

“You called me, so I came.” Your thoughts echo across every single mind connected to the Absolute. “What do you want?”

-YOU!-

Astarion curses under his breath when you don’t respond. He backs away from the gap in the rafters, he calls upon every ounce of strength in your loaned blood, the vampiric speed that lurks so far beyond his reach now. He surges forward, the wood straining and threatening to crack beneath his pounding footsteps. He leaps across the gap, landing on the narrow wooden with feline grace. With only a few strides separating you, he runs, flying across the distance until he reaches your side.

Immediately he grabs you—one arm around your injured shoulder, the other circling your waist, clutching you tightly against his front. He pulls you back only to find you completely limp in his arms, head lolling forward listlessly. For a brief moment, he panics, fearing the worst. But he can hear your heartbeat in your chest, dull, unsteady, but still there. He pulls against whatever force has you in its grasp, and it holds fast, yanking at your shoulder. Astarion grits his teeth and pulls, bracing one foot against the wall. But he doesn’t have enough strength in his body to wrench you free of whatever beast has you seized.

“Gale, get up here!” he shrieks.

Astarion needs to get you out of here. He won’t let whatever manner of creature lives in the walls have you. You’re his. You’re his and he won’t let go.

An unholy screech cleaves through your entire being, unmaking you. The creature pauses, carefully collects your scattered pieces, and then breaks off the smallest piece of itself. It continues to hold you, to watch you, but at the same time that tiny piece swims to the forefront, a bright mass of writhing tentacles appears before you.

“This is the voice they have given me. To better speak to your kind without breaking you.”

The voice flows through your entire being, your very soul soothed by the melodious sound. It radiates with a power so vast as to be incomprehensible, but within that power is the promise of safety. All you have to do is let go.

“I was once a servant of the Grand Design. Now I am a slave to theirs. But you…”

You have so many questions that need to be answered. This presence knows you—it knows who you were and everything you’ve lost. With all the power you feel in their light shining on your soul, surely they could repair the pieces of your fractured mind. All you’d have to do is ask. But your soul feels so impossibly heavy. All you want is for the voice to sing you to sleep.

“You were the jewelled hope for their design, but now you are their flaw.”

“Who?” The ache you feel is dull and distant, even though you know you should feel gutted. You failed. Whatever it was you were meant to do before you failed. Whatever you had, you lost.

“You abandoned me… You left me the slave of the puny Chosen, used to bind this world…”

That awakens something in you, an urge so desperate that your thoughts nearly unravel with it.

“Why did I leave?”

You need to know. You need to know why you left everything behind. You need to know that what you’ve gained is worth the price of everything you lost.

“I do not know,” the voice answers, and your one moment of clarity lapses back into stillness. “But I can no longer bind you.”

An image of the Astral Prism swirls through the air, circling, pulsing with its alien power. Its sigils glow, a bright spot of yellow-orange amidst the sea of red mist. It sinks below the surf and disappears. The ocean surges around you, the gentle current of thoughts swirling, circling down, down, down to the ocean floor. Your mind wants nothing more than to let the tide pull you under, to sink until you forget life on the surface.

“Come. Become.”

Your body, far, far away, fights uselessly against the pull of the beast dragging you into the tower’s bowels, far beneath the earth.

-COME-

-BECOME-

Your body begins to shake out of Astarion’s grasp, as the wall begins to consume you. “What’s happening? Speak to me,” he pleads, panic and anger knotting together inside him.

He digs his fingers into the fabric of your robes, knuckles turning even paler with the force of his grip. But panicked sweat slicks his plans, and despite his best efforts you begin to slip through his hold. He tries to readjust, arms and fingers straining against an unyielding force. But the beast on the other side of the wall preys upon any slack in his grip. His muscles burn like sun shining on vampiric skin, a searing pain that threatens to set him ablaze. But he holds on even still. He’d face the sun for you—he already did. He’d catch fire just to hold you in his arms.

You’re worth burning for. “Wake up!” he growls.

Gale finally reaches the platform just in time to watch Astarion’s arms finally give out. His hands desperately claw at your robes, catching briefly on your collar, your belt, the laces of your boots. But the force pulling you overwhelms Astarion’s middling strength. With a lurch and a quiet gasp, you slip through the crack in the wall, disappearing behind a curtain of writhing, purple meat.

Gale fits himself against Astarion’s side, craning to get a look into the dark crevice through which you disappeared. The only sight that greets him is darkness and undulating ribbons of flesh. He turns to Astarion with wild eyes.

“What in the Nine just happened?” he shouts incredulously.

Astarion doesn’t hear him, staring blankly at his empty hands. Sunshine lingers in the lines on his palms, your warmth caught beneath his skin. Already the chill of undeath is beginning to smother it. He feels your warmth fading as surely as he felt your robes slip through his grasp.

A cold hand gently cards its fingers through Astarion’s hair.

He looks up to meet Master’s eyes, confusion plain on his face. He kneels on the floor, Master standing tall above him, cold ambivalence glinting in his eyes. Astarion had been prepared for a hand across his cheek, cutting words deriding his poor offerings of late, his inability to do the one thing his body was made for. Instead he’s being gently caressed. The tenderness earns a gut reaction of fear, Astarion’s body train after his decade an a half of slavery to know any warmth is immediately chased by agony.

Master meets his confusion with a single arched brow. “Don’t tell me that you’re so empty-headed you don’t know how to show gratitude, boy.”

Astarion leans fully into Master’s touch, closing his eyes and forcing his body to settle. “Thank you, Master,” he sighs.

Master hums, neither pleased nor displeased, his hand continuing to play with Astarion’s hair. Master stands in silence, peering down at his spawn. Astarion stays low, hands folded in his lap, face carefully blank. Astarion fights the anxious shivers trickling down the length of his spine. Master will prey upon any sign of weakness, jam his sharpened nails into any crack he finds and pry it apart. The passing seconds fill the space of decades as Master waits for Astarion to crack.

Master gazes down at his son with sick amusem*nt. Gone is the prideful, arrogant boy he turned a decade and a half ago. In its place is a docile temptress, as dangerous as a declawed housecat. His son was ill-suited for his old position as a magistrate. That had been a titled foisted upon an undeserving child, in spite of his ineptitude.

“Your body truly is a wicked thing, isn’t it?” Master hums.

Astarion swallows, his tongue heavy in his mouth. “Yes, Master.”

“You were a truly terrible magistrate.” Master sniffs haughtily. “You serve as a far better whor* than you ever did as a judge.”

Astarion’s lip trembles. Every year, memories of his old life slip further and further away. After a decade and a half, those memories no longer feel like his. He used to hope for rescue, that someone, somewhere would care enough to come looking for him. But he gave up on those dreams long ago, and with them, the memory of anyone who could have saved him. It was easier to forget all the ways he’d been abandoned than to hold onto that sting. He used to remember his parents’ names, but now they’re only hazy afterimages of people that might have cared for him.

“Thank you, Master,” Astarion croaks.

“I’m feeling generous tonight,” Master sighs, the points of his nails gently dragging across Astarion’s scalp.

Astarion hates how good it feels. “Yes, Master?” he hums.

Sick amusem*nt curls at the corner of Master’s mouth. “I’ve brought you a gift. There’s a man waiting for you in East Wing. Tend to him for the night.”

The compulsion sets deep beneath Astarion’s breastbone, a pulsing, writhing thing that aches every moment that Astarion resists. Astarion doesn’t even have to fight down a wave of revulsion. He feels only relief that perhaps if he performs well enough he’ll be able to bed down in the spawn quarters tonight. If he’s lucky, perhaps he might even earn three rats instead of the usual one.

“It shall be done, Master,” Astarion says flatly.

Master’s hand falls from Astarion’s scalp with a harsh tug on the point of his ear. Astarion winces, but makes no other movement. Astarion stays on his knees, practiced enough to know that he needs Master’s permission to rise. Even as the compulsion twists painfully around his heart, he stays kneeling.

Master waits, far longer than he needs to, then nods in satisfaction. “Be on your way, then.”

Astarion rises to his feet, relief instantaneous as he’s allowed to follow Master’s order. He turns swiftly on his heel and walks steadily towards the East Wing as instructed. As he walks, he spares a handful of idle thoughts wondering who exactly it is he’s been loaned to for the night. Certainly a noble, but are they someone Master wants him to win over or someone that’s already deep in Master’s pocket and has purchased his company for the night? Are they a simple mortal patriar or a vampire? Astarion certainly hopes it’s a mortal, preferably one who’s paid for his company. If he’s been sold off like a common prostitute, all he has to do is doff his clothes and get on his back, and the client will do the rest. If it’s some simpering noble that has aspirations of winning over the heart of Lord Szarr’s frigid son then he’ll have to act and smile and pretend he cares at all about noble politics. It’s far more exhausting than just laying down and letting someone have their way with him.

As he nears the first guest room, he casts the thoughts from his mind, and works on slipping into his role. It hardly matters who’s waiting in the room. He’ll know soon enough. He prepares a sultry smile on his face, straightens his back and squares his shoulders. He takes a moment to smooth down the creases in his shirt, unlace his collar just enough to show the barest hint of collarbone. Once satisfied he clears his throat and raps his knuckles on the door before pushing it open.

Astarion sweeps into the room with a practiced flourish. “I hope I haven’t kept you wai—”

He stops in his tracks.

The young man sitting on the end of the bed stands so forcefully that he nearly tips forward. Long auburn hair is tied back from the man’s face, tawny, freckled skin glowing gold beneath the candlelight.

“Star,” the man gasps. “It’s really you.”

He crosses the room in three strides, reaching to pull Astarion into a bonecrushing embrace. Astarion violently recoils in an even mix of revulsion and horror, his back slamming up against the now closed door. The man stands in the space Astarion just vacated, arms still spread wide. His brow furrows in deep confusion, Astarion’s rejection an open wound.

“What are you doing here, Finn?” Astarion hisses, throat tight.

He was never supposed to see this man again. He never wanted to see this man again. Astarion spent a year in silence, alternating between cursing this man’s name and praying for his safety. Finn was responsible for the worst year of Astarion’s miserable existence. If it weren’t for him and his gentle heart, and sweet kisses, and the way he made Astarion feel truly loved for the first time in a decade, Astarion never would have tried to run, to do the impossible and escape his Master’s clutches.

Even just seeing Finn’s face now makes panic rise in Astarion’s throat. His lungs heave with breaths he doesn’t need. Even so, the stagnant air chokes him. The walls of the guest room press in. Every time he blinks the room shrinks, smaller and smaller until Astarion is trapped in a tiny stone box, with air that stinks of undeath and rot, his nails broken, sores forming on his back where he can’t move.

“Star, there’s no need to cry.” Finn gently tries to swipe the tears off Astarion’s cheeks.

“Don’t touch me!” Astarion shrieks.

He ducks out of the way, pressing himself into the corner of the room, staring at the other man with wild eyes. This time, Finn keeps his distance, both hands raised in a placating gesture, guilt and sadness clear on his face.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just don’t understand why you’re upset,” Finn says with that familiar rural twang that Astarion once learned to love.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Astarion hisses bitterly. “You got to go on living your life while I—” He shudders, blood threatening to rise from his stomach.

The first month was easy. Astarion rested his eyes, content that at least here, sealed away from his Master, no one could hurt him. The worst part was that trancing was no reprieve, as it only brought him memories of the torture and indignities he’d suffered. But still, the silence wasn’t so bad.

During the second month, he began to grow restless. The hunger was truly starting to set in, his belly a constant painful ache. There was no space within the tomb to move. He became hyperaware of every sensation in his body. Every itch he couldn’t scratch, every phantom sensation of spiders skittering over his skin, every stir of arousal in his loins. By the third month, he began to shout for help, knowing it wouldn’t come. He scratched his nails uselessly against the stone, until they splintered and his skin rubbed raw.

During the fourth month, he revisited a pleasant night with Finn in his reverie, one of the scant few times meditation brought him peace instead of torture. When he woke, he found his trousers sticky and soiled, and realized that he had no means of cleaning himself. He cried pathetically at the humiliation and the awful sensation of dirty linen against his skin.

In the fifth month, reality and his memories began to blend together. Faint memories of a warm hearth and sunshine would return to him, so vivid that for a moment he truly thought the past decade with Cazador had been nothing more than a nightmare, only for reality to gut him upon waking. He heard voices, convinced himself that someone had come to save him, that he would finally be free of this hell.

After six months he began to wonder if he’d been counting the days wrong. The only way he could measure time was through his trances and he’d lost track of them often enough. Surely it had been a year? He felt like he’d been born in this tomb and he would die here, too. If he hadn’t counted wrong… if it truly had only been six months… then he had to live through this hell once more. He stopped counting then, because he simply couldn’t bear the agony.

All that time he regretted running, instead of just handing Finn over to Master. One piddly elven boy wasn’t worth this torture. All his affection for the boy died, rotting inside his heart just like his body should have rotted in the ground. Finn got to spend the rest of his life in the sun, he would find another lover, get married, have children, all that fairytale bullsh*t. Finn would live the entirety of his life and die, and Astarion would remain a slave, a whor*, a thing to be owned and used.

His sole comfort when Master pulled him, stumbling and atrophied from that dusty tomb, was that at least Finn would live, that at least he had suffered for something.

So why was he here?

The darling boy that Astarion once saved, now filled out into broad shouldered man watches him with those gold-flecked brown eyes, downturned in sorrow. “I’m so sorry. Your father told me how hard—”

A burst of bitter laughter escapes Astarion’s chest. “My father?” he cackles. “What exactly did my father tell you?”

Finn hesitates, clearly shaken by Astarion’s erratic behavior. “He told me about your uncle.”

Astarion has no idea what ridiculous lie Master told Finn. But he knows how to work with the material he’s given. “How much did he tell you about my uncle?” he spits.

“He-he told me you had to run because your uncle crossed the Zhentarim.” Finn swallows thickly. “That, that sending word would have put me at risk.”

What a cute little lie. How very quaint. It seems Master has placed him in the midst of a children’s story, has lured Astarion’s white knight into the lion’s den with the promise of a trite fairytale ending, where Finn and his lost love get to ride into the sunset together.

But this isn’t a fairytale. There will be no happy ending, no sunsets over the glimmering Sea of Swords, no heroes.

Astarion realizes then, as his heart plummets to the seabed; Finn isn’t walking away.

There will be no days in the sun, no lovers, no beautiful wedding, or children. It was all for nothing. Astarion’s year of silence amounted to nothing in the end. He was punished for protecting this man, only to be the siren song that lured him into the depths. Finn is going to die here and Master is going to make him watch.

Astarion’s heart withered and died in that tomb. He has no love left to give. But despite that, he still bursts into ugly, agonized tears. Heaving, guttural sobs tear his throat raw. He resigned himself to an eternity of slavery in that tomb, vowed to only care for his own survival, everyone else be damned. What does he care for this foolish man who put his faith in a fairytale and answered the pied piper’s call? It was the same ridiculous mistake Astarion made when he tried to spare this man’s life. He thought the world was a storybook and that he could be a hero, only to have the veneer of justice shattered beyond recognition. There were no heroes or knights in shining armor—only those with power and the people held under their control.

At least Finn would get to die, a mercy that Astarion had prayed for a thousand times. Finn would find eternal peace while Astarion would be forced to go on suffering. Finn was unbelievably lucky. Astarion should be grateful that his flesh would remain unmarred, his task was simple compared to the tortures he’s suffered. Hells, Astarion didn’t even have to seek this target out, it served itself up to him on a silver platter. Astarion has cursed this man a thousand times over.

Yet he can’t stop sobbing, nor can he settle the unbearable ache in his chest. His ribs strain where his lungs threaten to break their cage. Astarion thought he’d trained himself better than this. He’d dulled his emotions to the point where he barely feels them at all. The pity he feels for his targets is a distant shadow of sympathy. The anger he feels towards Master is defanged, dulled by exposure. The only emotion that ever truly reaches him is fear, the panic that alights in his veins at his Master’s threats.

But the grief he feels now has hidden within his heart all this time, a wound so deeply embedded within his flesh that he forgot the part of him that used to fill the now empty space. Astarion never made any attempt to stitch his skin back together because he didn’t know it was broken. The despair and loneliness he felt while laying in that quiet tomb comes rushing back in a tidal wave of anguish. The heartstrings he cauterized years ago begin to hum violently, and his numb, deadened soul suddenly aches with the full weight of his fifteen years of slavery.

Astarion sobs, hands clutching at his own shoulders in a pathetic mockery of an embrace. “Why are you here now?”

Astarion prayed for him. He prayed that someone would come looking for him and save him from that wretched darkness. He’d had a family once, hadn’t he? Had they already forgotten him, too? There were people that knew his face; nobles he’d lain with, people that claimed to enjoy his company. Wouldn’t one of them miss his presence enough to search for him? There were regulars at the Elfsong that knew his face. The surly bartender, the alcoholic bard; they would wonder where he’d gone, surely? They’d worry after him?

And of course there was Finn, who claimed to love him, and painted a beautiful picture of the life they’d have together. A farm out in the countryside, far away from the politics and machinations of the city. A simple, happy life, just for the two of them, it was a ridiculous dream, but Astarion had let himself pretend, if only for a little while. He’d done the right thing. Wasn’t this the part of the story where the hero swooped in to save his love? So where was his hero? If Finn loved him so much then he should prove it. Astarion saved him, so now it was the other man’s turn to do the same.

But no one ever came.

(Astarion knew that if anyone tried to rescue him, Master would end them before they could cross the threshold. His only hope of salvation was another vampire lord or a group of monster hunters, and neither promised peace, only a different form of torture. But isn’t that what those grand tales of love were all about? Risking it all in the face of impossible odds? Staying by someone’s side no matter how much it hurt?)

Finn staggers forward, arms still outstretched. “I looked for you, Star,” he breathes, voice trembling.

“Not hard enough,” Astarion hisses.

Finn sucks in a breath through his teeth, tears beginning to roll down his cheeks. “No one knew where you went. It was like you just disappeared.”

Because for all intents and purposes he did. He returned to the Szarr Palace one night and emerged a year later a different beast. The Astarion Finn knew died in that tomb. The wretched thing cowering before Finn now is just an empty shell.

“You were supposed to move on,” Astarion says pathetically.

He had wanted Finn to have that fairytale ending. The farm and the husband and the family. Giving Finn a future was the last good thing he ever did, before resigning himself to playing the rake. His last act of defiance before becoming a slave. Now, Master had managed to take even that from him.

“How could I move on from you, Star?” Finn asks warmly, his hands coming to grasp Astarion’s elbows.

Easily, Astarion thinks, everyone I knew when I was alive seemed to do it well enough.

Astarion falls limply into Finn’s arms, the compulsion that he’s been ignoring all this time finally takes hold in his chest, forcing him to hold still as Finn cradles Astarion against his chest. Astarion buries his face in the other man’s shoulder, hands fisted tightly in the linen of his shirt. He’s still warm from the evening’s sunset, the last fading rays of sunlight still wrapped tight around Finn.

Astarion squeezes his eyes shut and carves this moment into his memory. Finn’s embrace is gentle; a warm, calloused hand smooths gentle circles between the knifepoint of his shoulderblades. Astarion immediately remembers why he couldn’t bear to bring Finn back here and has to fight off another wave of tears. Master’s order is an almost unbearable tightness in the center of his chest. He can’t put it off much longer before his body will begin to act on its own, and at the very least, he wants to savor this.

It might just be the last time he sleeps with someone who makes him feel something other than disgust.

“I’m here now,” Finn says gently, one hand carding through Astarion’s curls. “I won’t leave you again.”

A wretched wave of guilt shudders through Astarion’s body. It’s an empty promise, one that could never come to pass. Very, very soon, Master will come through the door and take Finn away. Finn thinks that this is his happy ending—the lovers reunited, now never to part. He doesn’t yet know that this is the final act of his tragedy. Astarion can play his part until then. For a brief moment, he can pretend that he’s the kind of man that gets to have a future.

He pulls back, just enough to meet Finn’s eyes, and brings both his hands to those sun-dappled cheeks. His lashes flutter, shedding crystalline tears. “Oh, I missed you, darling.”

It’s not entirely a lie.

“What’s all that shouting up there?” Karlach calls from down below.

Astarion crashes violently back into his body, hyperventilating on air he doesn’t need, dark spots crowding the edges of his vision. He braces himself on the wall, avoiding the throbbing purple meat. Gale glances at him, his instinct being to place a hand on the man’s back, but knowing better by now.

“There, uh… there seems to have been a small problem,” Gale calls over his shoulder, keeping a close eye on Astarion.

Astarion turns on Gale with a jolt, eyes aflame as he glares at the wizard. “A small problem?” he shouts. “This is what you call a small problem?”

Gale’s shoulders sag in relief, which only serves to stoke Astarion’s anger. “There you are. You worried me for a moment.”

“Focus, wizard!” Astarion snaps, baring his teeth.

Karlach rolls her eyes. “Will one of you please just tell me what’s going on?” A realization suddenly hits her when a third voice doesn’t step in to pry Gale and Astarion apart. “Where’s Soldier?”

Gale coughs into his fist. “You see, that’s the thing. There’s a rather strange crack in the wall up here with… some sort of aberrant flesh spilling out. It actually reminds me a bit of the appearance of the nautiloid. It has a definite psionic presence, I can feel it stretching down—”

“Oh for Gods’ sake, the wall ate them,” Astarion cuts in.

“What?”

Gale purses his lips and shoots Astarion an affonted glare. “I was getting to that point!”

“Within the next tenday? We don’t have time for your useless prattle, our leader just got eaten by a wall!” Astarion seethes, gesturing wildly towards the crevice you disappeared into.

Gale swallows thickly, his own nerves showing in the erratic pulsing of the Netherese stain around his eyes. “I think it’s a bit of a leap to use the word ‘eaten,’ it’s possible the wall only drags people somewhere, or even just seals them away. For all we know, we just need to cut through this first layer of flesh—”

Without another word Astarion unsheathes two daggers and begins hacking at the purple meat lining the edge of the crack.

“That wasn’t a suggestion!” Gale huffs, aghast.

Astarion doesn’t even bother to glance over his shoulder. “Do you have a better one?” One dagger sinks in with a satisfying squelch.

The entire wall to begins to pulse with malice, spilling into each of their minds (save Rolan) via the tadpole. It leaves a bitter, coppery taste in the back of Astarion’s mouth, but he doesn’t stop, only begins sawing at the flesh with his second dagger. The thick cords of meat writhe and undulate at the assault, purple ichor spraying from the incision. Astarion doesn’t shy away from bloodshed, but on his skin, the strange dark liquid begins to burn.

Astarion just grits his teeth and keeps stabbing, powering through the pain. A long, slow squeeeeeelch sounds as Astarion’s chosen tendril unsticks itself from the wall, each fiber of muscle and sinew peeling back one by one. At first, Astarion thinks he’s made progress, that the beast in retreating. But when he next tries to pull out his dagger for another swipe, the blade won’t budge. Once again, he finds himself straining to hold onto something as it slips through his hands. The tendril undulates, and the dagger gets sucked even farther into its flesh, deeper and deeper until Astarion finally has to let go lest his own hand be sucked in. As soon as he lets go, the flesh retreats, only for another, undamaged spindle of flesh to take its place.

Astarion wheels on Gale in a panicked frenzy. “What now?” he gasps.

Gale looks between Astarion and the wall, dark eyes wide, his own frantic energy a feast for the Netherese orb in his chest. The wisps of tainted magic swirling his veins writhe plainly on his skin, pulsing up the long column of his throat. Were it not for Mystra’s charm, he’s sure the bomb would go off, killing all the souls in this tower, the blast stretching past even Last Light Inn. He feels that destructive power at the tips of his fingers, a taut bowstring digging into the crook of his knuckle. He need only let go and the arrow would find its mark. It’s intoxicating, the amount of power at his fingertips, but none of it is any help in rescuing you from the mess you’ve landed yourself in.

“I… I don’t know,” Gale admits quietly.

Astarion’s hands shake, fury swelling like high tide to crowd out his rising panic. “What do you mean you don’t know?” he snarls, fingers clenching and unclenching into claws.

“I mean I don’t know!” Gale shouts back, his own nerves frayed at the prospect of a problem he can’t solve—at failing you after all the faith you’ve placed in him. “I didn’t study Mindflayer colonies at Blackstaff!”

“Then what good are you?” Astarion spits.

Immediately after Astarion pivots on his heel and tangles both his hands in his own hair. Gale steels his jaw. The needlepoint of Astarion’s vitriol shouldn’t sting as much as it does. He knows Astarion’s ire is born of panic and not genuine disdain. He knows that the loss and fear Astarion is experiencing in this moment is something he’s never had to contend with before. Gale knows better than any how love erodes common sense and allows the heart to reign where the brain should prevail.

But sting it does, because Gale has asked himself that very question time and time again.

“I’m sorry, Astarion,” Gale sighs, pushing his own hair out of his face. “At the height of my power I could create an Arcane Eye or even Scry so that we could follow but those abilities are beyond my reach, now.”

Gale could have done a great many things before the orb burrowed itself into his chest. Now it resides there, leeching off his connection to the Weave, consuming all the magic in his veins yet never feeling satisfied. Even now, with its progress halted, it still hungers—it still siphons off his own power, dampening the symphony that’s been his lullaby since birth.

What good is he, indeed, unable to do the one thing that anyone ever wanted him for?

Astarion’s hands shake, buried in his curls. Once, as punishment for lying, Cazador poured acid down his throat. The draught branded a trail of hellfire down the length of his throat, then pooled in his belly. His flesh bubbled and blistered, slowly melting away like perfectly rendered fat on the tongue. He could only writhe and scream as the caustic brew slowly spread white-hot agony into every crevice of his abdominal cavity.

His chest burns hotter now than it did then, fury and despair melting from his veins into all the hollow spaces inside him, where he was so certain nothing could ever stir again. He’s used to being helpless—he resigned himself to slavery long ago. Ever since he gave himself over to every command and indignity without objection. His only choice was to leave his body when the pain and revulsion grew to be too much. He found safety in oblivion, that empty space where his mind retreats.

Once again, he finds himself helpless, unable to save you as you slipped through his grasp. But he has choices. There’s an infinite number of options at his disposal—magic, diplomacy, violence, stealth—but not a damn one will do anything to help you. For the first time in his life, he was able to speak his mind. He was trying to help, to pull you back from the precipice as he had before, on that cold moonlit night in this very tower. But instead he fumbled his words and watched as you practically threw yourself onto the jagged rocks below. He made one last futile attempt to catch you as you fell and was only able to feel as bit by bit you slipped away.

The first person he’s ever cared for—the one that raised hope from the grave he laid his in—and he couldn’t do a damn thing to save you. He can’t do this. Caring for someone is the one torture Cazador was never able to inflict on him. It’s the one pain he hasn’t managed to dull.

He crouches down, propping his elbows on his knees and hiding his face in the shadow of his arms. He hears a high-pitched keen, hissing through bared teeth. It isn’t until he registers the buzz in his throat that he realizes the sound is coming from him.

He hears himself whimper, weak and pathetic. “Gale, I can’t—”

Gale’s own throat seizes, constricting painfully at the sight of his proud friend brought so low. “I know—”

“You don’t!” Astarion hisses through his teeth. His voice suddenly turns quiet, somber. “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

No one knows what it’s like to lose hope so thoroughly, to excise it from your chest to survive and bury it beneath six feet of dirt. No one knows how terrifying it is to feel it blossom again, blooming beneath the golden sun in spite of all his attempts to smother it. No one knows how having it ripped away will be the thing that finally breaks him.

Gale swallows with a heavy breath. “You’re right,” he breathes. “But I promise, I’ll do whatever it takes, and I do mean whatever.” Gale borrows the conviction he’s heard from you so many times.

It’s the same resolve you used when you vowed to find another method to destroy the Absolute, and again when you promised Karlach to find a solution for her engine. To you, their lives were more important than all the realms. You’d let the world fall to keep them both alive. At the time he found the admission startling, emblematic of your naïvete and selfishness. But he understands a bit better now. In this moment, Mystra and the Absolute fall away, the task that’s consumed so much of his thoughts these days suddenly unimportant. What matters is bringing you back to safety and protecting his dear friend’s fragile heart. In this moment, he finds that there’s precious little he wouldn’t do to save you.

Gale continues, speaking with false confidence in the face of Astarion’s fear. “None of us are going to abandon one of our own.”

Astarion is quiet for a long moment, staring down at the rotting wood beneath his feet. He recognizes your words echoed in Gale’s voice. He isn’t used to trusting Gale, not the way he trusts you, but the familiar words still strike the same chord. Gale’s power is immense, and the company he keeps even stronger. He’s infuriatingly earnest to boot. If Gale vows to save you, Astarion thinks he’s the type of man that keeps his promises.

Astarion would like to be that kind of man, for you. He told you that he and the others can manage without you; it’s time to prove it. You’re not the only one willing to do the impossible to protect the people you cherish.

Astarion lets out a long sigh, his jaw steeled. “Is there truly nothing you can do?”

Gale considers for a moment, mentally cataloging all his spells. “I could send a familiar after them,” he suggests meekly. “However, Find Familiar takes an hour to cast and Halsin should be back before then.” Gale snaps his fingers, an idea coming to him suddenly. “Halsin! He can Wildshape into something small enough to slip through and investigate!”

Astarion rises to his full height, turning on his heel with a sharp nod. “That’s as good a plan as any, I suppose.” He checks to make his shortsword is tightly secured on his belt. “He’ll have to follow me down.” Astarion turns ninety degrees to face the crack in the wall and braces both arms on the opening.

Gale takes a step forward with a start. “What are you doing?” he asks, shocked.

Astarion looks over his shoulder at Gale, then forwards, where he’s already fit one foot through the crevice, then back to Gale with a raised eyebrow. “You know I’ve developed a sudden interest in Selûnite architecture.”

Gale exhales through his nose at the mockery in Astarion’s voice. “We have no idea where that thing will take you,” Gale warns. “For all we know, there’s a meat grinder at the bottom.”

Astarion pastes on a bitter smile, his laugh lines sharp with disdain. “Then I should hurry down and fetch my darling so that there’s enough left to bring back, shouldn’t I?”

Before he tried returning the shard of the Weave to Mystra—the one that became the orb in his chest—he told Tara of his grand plan to prove his worth to Mystra. Tara, the more cautious of them both, warned him of the dangers, that for all his magical prowess, perhaps he was reaching beyond his capabilities. Full with equal amounts arrogance and ambition, Gale heard none of it. Not even Mystra herself could have convinced him not to try. He was desperate and in love and desperately in love.

Gale knows that Astarion’s mind is set and not even divine intervention would change his course. “At least hold a moment,” Gale sighs.

Astarion does with one impatient eyebrow raised as Gale traces a familiar sigil in the air, cornflower blue magic collecting at his fingertips, as he carefully gathers loose threads of Weave between his fingers. “Sine metu.” As his words form the final trigger that sets loose the carefully crafted spell in his hands, he touches two fingers gently to Astarion’s forehead.

Astarion doesn’t move, watching Gale’s hand draw closer. His eyes close with a slow blink at the touch. Gale thinks of Tara, faking an put-upon sigh and closing her eyes when he pressed a kiss to her forehead before leaving for class. Feather Fall finds root in Astarion’s flesh, his body buoyed gently as he prepares to leap.

Gale pulls back with a gentle smile. “Now, go, my friend. Do try not to get yourself killed.”

Astarion flashes him a roguish grin, fangs glinting in the low light. “Just don’t bring the tower crashing down on our heads and I’ll be fine.”

With a last nod from Gale, Astarion grabs at the first hanging rope of meat with a sickening squelch, the tendril wrapping around his wrist. They hang down much like jungle vines made of alien meat—thinking of them in those terms makes Astarion’s climb easier. Astarion grimaces in disgust, but lifts one foot from the stone tower’s edge to find purchase on the interior stone. He stretches his other hand out, grasping at another cord of flesh. Clear, viscous fluid oozes out from between fingers. He gags in the back of his throat, but continues to hold on.

The strange being within the tower is strangely still, not writhing as it had when Astarion sliced it with his daggers. The tentacle around his wrist releases easily when he reaches to grab another further in. It… seems to realize that Astarion is venturing into and not out of its maw. It’s unsettling, but at the very least means his journey will be more peaceful than yours. He lifts his foot from the towers edge, his last tether to safety, and wraps his leg fully around his chosen rope. He can see the long, writhing ribbons of meat stretching far, far down into the base of the tower. A dull pink glow emanates from somewhere far below, his one guiding light as he hangs by the meager strength of his own arms.

Tentatively, he casts a wide net with the tadpole, scanning across the minds of everyone within reach. The presence of the creature inside the tower looms large in front of his mind, pulsing with unimaginable power, beckoning him to join with it. Despite his own inclinations, he ignores it for now, searching below, down, down… there. The familiar brush of your tadpole against his is a welcome sensation—flame-tempered iron and sunshine, a harsh edge that offers warmth and protection. You protected him from the others when he drained you dry. You stepped in when he was ready to trade his body away on Lae’zel’s orders. You dug through Lathander’s holy rubble for three days in hopes of finding enough of a body to bring him back. It’s time for him to return the favor.

He lets go. He falls, and falls, and falls.